April 14, 1965

College Discipline

High school drop-outs must have nightmares about the new educational facility at Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Broward County high school students vie for the opportunity of attending the plush ultra-modern institution 11 months of the year. There are no school busses, so parents have complete responsibility of getting their children to school.

Every student every year must take five subjects-one each in English, math, history, science and language. If he wishes, a student may take one “elective” subject, usually a craft skill such as woodworking or cooking.

There are no grades, but the student must pass each course “satisfactorily” before he can go on to the next advanced course on the same subject.

Under this setup it is possible, though not probable, that a student poor in math but brilliant in other subjects might spend his entire high school career on the same math course.

Extra-curricular activities are provided by a Parent’s Association -- not by the school.

Likewise, there is no PTA. Contact between parents and teachers are limited to conferences about individual students.

There are only 15 students to a class, so instruction is highly personalized. Teachers spend full time teaching. Parents spend full time training. The difference between the two responsibilities is important.

* * *

The contrast between the discipline of Broward County High School students -- and the inhibition of northern college kids now swarming on Ft. Lauderdale’s beaches -- is significant.

Adults are prone to an amused tolerance of silly and unrestrained antics of students. “Youthful exuberance,” they say of the public necking on Florida beaches and the blocking of traffic on the streets of Columbus, Ohio.

A poor excuse for thumbing noses at their elders, I say.

Education is discipline -- the training of mind and character to work under controlled conditions. It isn’t freedom to indulge whims, or to pursue hastily conceived social experiments.

It seems to me we need citizens educated to the responsibilities of freedom, not its privileges. Uncontrolled reactions generate heat, not light.

* * *

Parents struggling to provide the best possible education for their children are shocked these days at the mass tantrums displayed by many college and university student bodies.

Particularly disturbing was the prolonged school stoppage at the University of California brought on by a ban against a vulgar campus magazine trumpeting four-letter gutter words

This was but one incident in a long series of student demonstrations. The amazing thing was the support that dissidents got from many faculty members.

At our own Oberlin College, we see a committee of students organized to force faculty leaders to permit beer drinking on campus.

Several colleges have student-organized committees promoting the visits of co-eds to men’s dormitories.

It is quite likely that beer drinking and private dates in bedrooms are innocent pleasures. Nonetheless, my point is that these “reforms” are coming about by pressure from youngsters on adults.

Our leaders of higher education seem to be abdicating willingly their responsibility to discipline. The trend appears to be toward instruction, not education.

* * *

Oberlin students seem more bent on forcing the world to fit their notions than in first learning the causes of our problems -- and in achieving the mental skills to solve them.

The civil rights struggle now reaching its climax certainly deserves careful study by college students. I contend, however, the time for marching and picketing and civil disobedience is after graduation.

Adult Negroes -- and their adult white supporters -- are quite capable of conducting an effective campaign without the assistance of half-baked kids.

Oberlin College has a long history of sympathy with the Negro. The awareness of its student body to social problems-as well as their right to alcoholic beverages - is commendable.

However, sojourns in Alabama to march on court houses; or in Mississippi to rebuild burned - out Negro churches; or in Cleveland to picket the Federal Building; can only be an intrusion into the four years or so set aside for formal study.

There is a lifetime ahead for pursuit of causes.

* * *

In South America, student groups are notorious for off-campus political activity. Leaders of these “student unions” invariably are in their thirties and long ago ceased their studies. Many are Communist inspired.

They indulge in any opportunity to make trouble, no matter how trivial. Changes in streetcar fares or schedules are a favorite pretext to throw rocks at the police.

As a result, college education in South America often times is a farce. We may be heading in that direction in the United States.

Before you pooh-pooh the possibility, consider the incredible statement of Miss Prathia Hall, a leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

When asked how “students” had enough time to travel around the country to demonstrate constantly for Negro civil rights she said, ”Well, some of us are professional students. Others take a year off from their schools.”

Note her use of the term, “professional students.”

* * *

Now we are to have participation of the colleges, as institutions, in political activity.

A “teach-in” sponsored by faculty of Western Reserve University and Case Tech will draw attention to a protest against United States policy in Viet Nam.

It is about time we put our foot down on political activities by students, professors and schools, as such.

The causes are not materially helped and education is suffering great harm.

By Lindsey Wilger Williams, retired newspaper publisher and syndicated columnist